Ground off the welds from the stock spring seats. Currently looking for somebody with a miter saw to cut a section out of the housings.

I'm also currently emailing back and forth with a representative from CoilSprings.com about getting custom springs made. This will be roughly comparable in price with my previous idea of using Volvo parts. However, due to the fact that Rsport International has not been responding to my emails in over a month while most of my emails to CoilSprings.com are replied to within a matter of hours, I think CoilSprings.com may be the way to go. The only issue with the custom route is that I have to send in one of my stock springs, so downtime and shipping cost are a factor. However since I was planning on making my own urethane bushings for the four axle links, I suppose the timing could work out.

My issue is the way the Volvo fan is wired. It has one large + wire going into the relay block, one chassis ground, and two wires activate the fan when they are grounded. One is high speed (probably for when the AC is activated on the Volvo) and one is low speed. I will only be using low speed right now. This controller, as with pretty much every controller I've seen, switches hot wires, not grounds, so I'm just not clear on how I'm supposed to wire this.

12/21/13Fan is installed and wired and works perfectly as I planned, comes on and turns off appropriately all by itself. Except for one tiny detail. I forgot that I should be pulling power from a switched source, because when I turn the car off and the radiator stays hot for a little while, the fans still turn on and off while the car is off, which will probably end up draining my battery.

12/23/13Now the car won't start. I think I either blew my starter relay or my wiring for my neutral safety bypass is messed up because I don't even get a click even though the battery is fine. And I don't think it has anything to do with the fan, the only wiring on the car I had to touch was just connecting the power wire to the battery, and it started fine multiple times with the fan working, but yesterday morning it wouldn't and I had to push start it.

12/29/13It wasn't the neutral safety wiring, it was the starter relay going bad (the one I pulled out of the junk yard) so I replaced it with a jumper wire like it was before. Less than ideal, but whatever.

1/9/13The intermittent starting problem reared its ugly head again today. It started up great this morning, but when I tried to go to lunch it just gave me the "click" and wouldn't turn over. I was so pissed I may or may not have punched the rear quarter, and then subsequently had to push the dent back out lol. Anyways, when it came time to go home after work it fired up fine first try. So tonight I went through and cleaned the - cable end and battery terminal as well as the existing chassis ground and added an extra ground to the intake manifold. I also cleaned the + terminal and cable end at the battery and at the starter. Hopefully this will fix my issue. Hopefully.Either way, reving that big old 2.8L six up to 6500rpm on the way home TOTALLY makes up for any electrical frustrations. Good lord, dat noise.....

1/10/13The other night when I was under the car cleaning up the wiring, I also added a heat shield sleeve to the speedo cable, since it's sorta touching the exhaust. I used a spark plug heat sleeve like thesehttp://www.4x4review.com/Portals/1/OldI ... res007.JPGI think it must have already been brittle from the heat, because last night my speedo stopped working. I put it up on a lift after work today and found that there was a break somewhere in the short cable. (The speedo cable is two pieces, a short section about a foot long connects the transmission to the long cable that goes up to the dash)So I ordered a new short section for like $12 and it will be here on Tuesday or Wednesday.Also, I got my urethane from McMaster-Carr in today. Pretty much ready to take this thing down for suspension overhaul as soon as I get the MR2 fixed.

1/12/13I got the car up in hover mode today, all 4 corners on jackstands. My awesome girlfriend was nice enough to take some pics while she helped me out.

And here's the urethane poured into the arms. I'm only doing two at a time and poured the rest of the urethane into a solo cup. I'll probably use sections of the remaining cylinder as side pieces to keep the arms from sliding laterally on the metal sleeves. Holes will be drilled in the bushings for the sleeves to fit through, obviously.http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d43/S ... foutny.jpg

I took my control arms to work with me yesterday and used the press in the shop to pop out the old ball joints.

Old vs. new

So after work I got home, reinstalled the control arms (now with urethane bushings and new ball joints), and now the front end is done.I also removed the upper rear axle arms, burned/chiseled, and otherwise removed the old rotten squishy bushings and filled them with urethane as well.

Today, I took the lower rear arms I did two days ago and finished them up so they are ready to go on the car. According to the literature that came with the urethane, it reaches 90% of it's final physical properties in 2 days assuming 70-something degree temperatures, so I just left them inside for two days to cure.

I used a 3/4" auger drill bit. It worked beautifully.

Then the metal sleeve from the original bushing goes in. Here it is next to one of the old bushings. Some I could just push out with my bare hands. Others stuck to the bushings and had to be cut out and cleaned up.

The sleeves were like 1mm over 3/4" so I purposefully used the 3/4 bit so as to make it a tight fit. I just hammered them down into the holes and they are in there nice and snug

And there you have it. Custom home-made poly bushings ready to go back on the car.

Oh, and I sent out one of my rear springs to CoilSprings.com today, so hopefully in a few weeks I'll have some sick nasty custom lowering springs for the rear!

Cool deal on the liquid poly! I may have to do the same on some of my own projects. I have a suggestion though. Although it seems that the metal bushing went in tightly, It may be better to make a jig to hold the arm and bushing and pour the poly around the bushing. If the bushing was etched or some indentions were made on the outside surface, this would make the whole arm/bush more static and prevent any premature wear that could occur from slippage. I suspect your setup will be totally fine for a long time because that arm isnt subjected to high speed rotation. Enjoying your thread and ya wagon fosho

Hate to tell you this now, but the rear suspension arms are the same ones used on the celicas... or at least they look exactly alike to my eye. You could have gotten a complete rear set from any of the suspension suppliers, it is what I am going to do. The work looks good and I do like the inginuity you used. I haven't gotten anywhere on my wagon, the wife's camry has had a slew of problems lately including the headgaskets, so that has taken up a lot of my time.

Got a call back from Coilsprings.com over the weekend. They are starting to design my springs. Apparently they tested the stock one I sent in and the rate was like 140lbs/in or something stupid like that. They asked if I was REALLY sure I wanted 400lb/in and I explained how the car currently handles like overcooked pasta and that I was used to driving an autocross-prepped MR2 on a daily basis, he laughed and said "OK that makes sense". There are only two issues at this point. One is that it will probably be around 4 weeks before I see the springs. The other is that the new springs will only be 8" long, which means they will come unseated if the axle is at full droop. So, I've been looking into limit straps and I think I'm gonna go with these:http://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/cat ... T-KIT.htmlBasically you weld those mounts to the chassis and the axle, then pick what length you want, and it will keep the axle from drooping too far. Normally this job is accomplished with getting shorter shocks, but even the Camaro AGX's I have are too long to keep an 8" spring in place at full droop.

Also the starting problems haven't been sorted yet, but the weather has been so bad I haven't had time to look into it much.

I have been going through the car while it's been down to try and figure out my starting problem and I think I've figured it out. Keep in mind electrical systems are super hard for me to wrap my brain around, so don't hate on my slowness. I aced everything in physics until the chapter on electricity which I failed. Just saying.

OK so here's how I see it. The relay that the PO bypassed is in fact the starter relay. It has four wires:white- steady voltage from the battery when the key is in ACCblack- goes to the starterblack/orange - power from the ignition switch (only actually sees like 11.5volts for some reason)red - grounds through the alarm system

The issues:1. the alarm system on this car is really messed up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it goes off for NO reason.2. the black/orange wire only sees 11.5 volts. This is even with a brand new ignition switch so I am going to presume this is normal and is usually enough for the relay to click

I think the reason the PO bypassed the relay and jumped the black/orange wire straight to the black wire was because the alarm was dying. Every now and then the starter would kick from the 11.5 volts, but not reliably. I think the reason the relays I've tried to put in haven't worked was because of the wonky alarm acting up. I jumped the black and white wires to each other, turned the key to ACC, and the starter would spin if I hit the clutch pedal so I think my logic works.

Right now what I am thinking I'm going to do is unplug the alarm computer box (lots of people ditch it anyway). I'll take the red wire that grounds the starter relay, and ground it, bypassing the immobilizer. Then I should be able to have a functioning relay, allowing for the proper function of the starting system. Here's the wiring diagram in case you were curious

Naturally, the giganto-sidewall 195/70's rub in the front, so I may well be ordering some 185/60's off TireRack here soon. It also desperately needs an alignment, the panhard rod may need to be adjusted of the axle is off center (if it is, it's not by much), and some limit straps for the rear axle as well. Also one of these:http://www.xcessivemanufacturing.com/ONLINESTORE.html?cid=60&step=4&pid=349

But yeah I'm pretty happy with how everything looks (and drives, holy crap). Once I get the smaller tires and skid plate, the front will go a touch lower I think.

Swapped out the 195/70's on the front for some 185/60's. They don't rub anywhere near as bad anymore but at the same time they don't look quite as nice, since they don't tuck up into the fenders. Oh well.

That did drop an inch of ride height just from the change in sidewall though. Here's a Lego samurai standing under my frame rail. There's about a finger's width between the sword and the frame.

And the front mudflap. It scrapes if I take a turn too fast haha. It's about 1.5" off the ground

The oil pan is currently around 2.5-3" off the ground. I'll definitely be getting a skid plate with my next paycheck.

3/9/14Limit straps installed. Bottom is bolted to the upper arm bolts and the top is fed through slots cut in the floor of the trunk and held in place with crossbolts. Not super ideal but hey it works.

3/18/14 Ever since I bought the car the HVAC controls have been very hit or miss. There are four fan speeds: Auto, Off, Low, and High. Off obviously worked, but Low never did and High was intermittent. Basically to have any fan at all I'd have to use Auto which varies in speed depending on the temperature in the car. So I overheard somebody talking about a blower motor resistor pack. I'd never heard of it so I googled and low and behold it could be the issue. So I looked it up at work and it was a whopping $12. Discontinued. One left in the country. Bought. Installed. Fixed.

Here's the old one. Several broken connections, deteriorated metal, and generally garbage condition.

Here's the new one. So shiny and functional-looking.

SUCCESS!

3/31/14Just ordered one of these pretty babies. This comes after freaking myself out by scraping my subframe while shuffling cars around my driveway. I figured my oil pan could use a little extra protection.

I swapped out the front parking light peanut bulbs for some LED's and holy god are they bright. And awesome. I did the same on my MR2 (euro dual bulb housings ftw) and it just looks awesome.

Tomorrow my skid plate should be arriving, but more importantly weather permitting I will probably be putting the car in the air and pulling the diff out to investigate my clunk. I'm almost positive it's the spider gears. I'm going to bring the diff into work and have one of the mechanics look at it (the guy restores vintage Land Cruisers, so he knows a thing or two about diffs). The fix will consist of either new shim washers to get proper clearance of the spider gears (like $10), or a spider gear kit with new gears (like $165, with only two left in the country last I checked). So hopefully I'll be rid of this awful rear end clunk relatively soon.

Anyhow, I got the diff out today. I think there are some clearance issues with both the spider gears AND the ring/pinion. Neither are terrible, but I think a combination of the two is leading to too much play. I'll be taking it in to work with me tomorrow. Hopefully one of the techs will be able to help me sort it out. Also, this came in